(2.5) Specific Hardware Recommendations

Are there any specific hardware recommendations?

Here are some of the peripherals and adapters that are particularly well suited to OS/2 Warp. Use these recommendations as general guidelines for adding peripherals to your OS/2 Warp PC. When you buy a new PC, remember to ask for OS/2 Warp preloaded. When you purchase a new add-on for your PC, remember to ask about OS/2 Warp drivers and compatibility.

• Sound cards. There are many excellent sound cards on the market for OS/2 Warp. Two of the best are the IBM Audiovation (available for both AT bus and Microchannel) and the Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 SCSI-2. This model SoundBlaster includes a built-in SCSI port for CD-ROM drives, tape backup devices, etc., and OS/2 Warp's built-in Adaptec 152x SCSI driver will work with the card. OS/2 Warp also includes the correct SoundBlaster audio driver. An OS/2 Warp driver diskette for the Audiovation adapter is available either with the card or from the IBM PC Company BBS at 919-517-0001.
• 16550AFN Buffered UART Serial Port Adapters. Improves high speed serial communications performance. Price: $35 for a two port adapter from Zero-One Networking (phone 800-255-4101 or 714-693-0808). Ask about adapters with parallel ports.
• Four Port 16550AFN Buffered UART Serial Adapter. The STB 4-COM adapter is available for $110 delivered by calling 800-735-5266 Ext. 64 (or 919-286-1502 Ext. 40). The 16-bit STB adapter provides four buffered serial ports, each with an independently selectable interrupt and address. IRQs above 7 are supported for each port. Up to two of these adapters may be installed in the same system (for up to eight buffered serial ports). Four six inch 8-pin DIN to DB9 male converter cables are supplied. Fifteen month manufacturer's warranty and free technical support from STB.
• CD-ROM Drives. True SCSI-2 CD-ROM drives (double speed or better) are preferred over other CD-ROM drives. They are easier to configure, perform better, and can be easily transferred to another PC (particularly portable, external drives). They can also be more easily attached to many notebook computers. The SoundBlaster 16 SCSI-2 adapter, mentioned above, can provide the SCSI port for a CD-ROM drive.
• SuperVGA cards. A wide variety of SuperVGA cards work well with OS/2 Warp. Many users find that cards based on the S3 chipsets are among the most compatible and represent the best values.
• RAM (Memory). Your first choice when you wish to upgrade your PC to enhance the performance of OS/2 Warp. Choose good quality, name brand memory, and make sure that parity checking is included. (Some new PCs are attempting to get by with non-parity RAM. To ensure that all your memory is operating correctly, parity checked RAM is preferred. In fact, many higher end systems, especially servers, use error correcting memory for reliability.)
• Hard Disk Drives. For a PC with one or two hard disks, each 512 MB or less in size, IDE hard disks represent the best value. They are inexpensive, and they perform well. However, SCSI hard disks with a good quality OS/2 Warp compatible SCSI adapter are generally a better choice when you have more than one hard disk in your PC and/or you wish to use hard disks larger than about 512 MB in size. SCSI also provides the opportunity to add tape backup, CD-ROM, and other devices. Caching hard disk adapters are generally useful only after you have added main memory (RAM) to the PC itself.
• Tape Backup Devices. Cheap tape drives (which attach to your PC's diskette controller quite often) are quite tempting, and they work well under OS/2 Warp with backup software such as IBM's DualStor and MSR's BackMaster. However, a SCSI tape drive (such as a 4 mm DAT drive) is now only a little more expensive. Each 4 mm cartridge can hold 2 GB of data (uncompressed) or more. With hard disks growing larger and larger, you may wish to invest in a high capacity tape drive.
• Processor/Motherboard. If you need to save money, save it by getting a system with a less powerful processor. OS/2 Warp will benefit most from adding main memory (RAM), and generally least from upgrading the processor. Since OS/2 Warp multitasks so well, the need for raw speed is usually less. (If you use another operating system, where you spend time waiting for tasks to complete, and where you cannot put tasks in the background and still get other work done, you can imagine that a faster processor would be of greater benefit.) However, make sure that your PC's motherboard contains an OverDrive socket, and preferably one that supports symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and the Intel MPS 1.1 standard. That is, a system into which you can place a second processor chip and have both processors run at the same time. If you then run OS/2 for SMP, which supports two or more processors, you have a much more powerful system should you choose to upgrade. Also, the more processor cache memory you can afford in your PC, the better. However, if you can find a system which also uses so-called interleaved memory, OS/2 Warp will benefit tremendously. Many systems designed as servers use faster interleaved memory.
• Notebook Computers. The critical factor when choosing a notebook computer for OS/2 Warp is support for PCMCIA card slots. Most notebooks are now supported, but be sure to check ahead of time. If your notebook computer is not listed in OS/2 Warp's list of PCMCIA drivers, choose either the closest match (in terms of manufacturer) or try each, one by one, in turn. Midwestern Micro notebooks, for example, appear to work well with OS/2 Warp's AST PowerExec PCMCIA driver. Toshiba now preloads OS/2 Warp on its notebooks, on request, and all IBM Thinkpads will ship with OS/2 Warp preloaded.
• Network Adapters. Any network adapter with an "IBM LAN Server" or "IBM OS/2 NDIS" driver (usually supplied on a diskette with the card) will work fine with OS/2 Warp. Ethernet (especially 10BaseT) is a popular choice for PC networking. IBM, 3Com, Cabletron, Intel, and SMC are some of the most popular brands. However, many large companies have upgraded their Token Ring networks to 16 Mbps, so if you are looking for a good value for a small network, 4 Mbps IBM Token Ring adapters for both AT bus and Microchannel are inexpensive and thoroughly standardized. Setting up a small OS/2 Warp network with Artisoft's LANtastic for OS/2? Try an IBM MAU (Multistation Access Unit), as many Token Ring cards as you need (used 4 Mbps cards are under $50), and cables. Look in the back pages of LAN Times, The Processor, PC Week, and other publications which are read by larger corporate computer users, and you'll see great bargains on good quality networking products. See (3.8) Networking Products for some more advice.

Related information:

(2.1)  Hardware Requirements
(2.2)  SuperVGA Support
(2.4)  COM3 and COM4 Support
(2.6)  More Than 16 MB RAM
(3.2)  Shareware and Freeware Sources
(3.6)  Multimedia (MMPM/2)
(3.8)  Networking Products
(3.12) Backup Software